Last week I suffered the indignity of running on a treadmill while James Dunne, manager of The Running School, filmed from behind and both sides. This week, he turned the embarrassment up a notch by having me prance on the running machine like a pony. The end results will hopefully be worth it.

The first fault James identified was a limp I had no idea about. My left leg apparently hits the ground much harder than my right. I once broke my right leg and I’ve had problems with my right knee before, which have now been fixed. However, it seems subconsciously I still try to protect my right side.

Secondly, allegedly I make inadequate use of my hamstrings and gluts when I run, and my arms do virtually nothing. “They’re just along for the ride,” says James.

On a more positive note, a few years ago I switched from heel striking to landing on my forefoot, and work I’ve done with Jack Maitland at TheTriathlonCoach.Com has helped me increase my leg turnover rate or cadence.

After warming up, James asked me to concentrate on heel flicks (or butt kicks). To make the exercise more challenging, he cranked up the speed of the treadmill and set it at an incline of about 12%. The aim, apparently, was to exaggerate the correct motion and teach my muscles to fire correctly. At this stage he made me hold the rail of the treadmill so I only had to worry about my legs.

After repeating this exercise about five times on 20 second bursts, he added in the next component: driving the knee forwards while still kicking my backside. It was at this stage I started to feel slightly ridiculous. It doesn’t help that the gym has wall-to-wall full height mirrors so I could admire my lack of coordination from all sides. But worse was to come.

“Now,” said James, “it’s time to bring your arms into the equation.”

He dragged me in front of another mirror, made me fix my elbows with a 90 degree bend and pump my arms so that my hand swung from my hip to my chin – all while standing still.

The next step, if you haven’t guessed, was to put it all together back on the treadmill. Fortunately there is no recording of my efforts at this stage and even if there were, it wouldn’t be on this website. How come thinking about running makes it so much harder? If I got my arms going, my legs flew all over the place, and if I concentrated on my legs, my arms stopped moving.

To make things ‘easier’, James set the treadmill at a 1% gradient and reduced the speed to about marathon pace – something I should be able to keep up for hours. He had me doing one minute intervals of exaggerated running at this speed, and I could barely hold the pace. My heart rate shot straight into 5k territory. I expressed my concern – this stuff was making me slower, not faster – but James told me not worry. “It’s all part of the process. Bear with me.”

After the fifth one minute interval I was exhausted. Luckily the session ended there and I had chance to loosen off with a few stretches. James warned me I might have some muscle soreness the next day. He was absolutely right. I tried an easy run and felt like a shire horse trying to do a ballet. James told me to think only about my arms and not my legs while doing any running between sessions, but once you’ve been made aware, it’s almost impossible not to notice how you move, and being conscious of it makes movement clunky.

The plan is to drill the new movements until they become automatic and that’s when speed should increase. For now I have to trust that will be the case. But, whatever happens, I feel that just thinking more about running and being aware of what you do can only be a good thing.

At Running School

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